Ellis: Nonbinding resolutions: Just for the fun of it

Mar. 1, 2014

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We get a report — compliments of the Argus Leader’s David Montgomery — that state representatives are spending hours debating nonbinding resolutions during the current legislative session. Nonbinding, as you know, is just another word for meaningless. In fact, there are more nonbinding resolutions this year than in any year since 1988. Blame Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama.

So you get mad, wondering why your highly paid lawmakers — $6,000 a year — are wasting valuable public resources on nonbinding resolutions that aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. The more you think about it, the angrier you get.

It festers and festers. Finally, at work one day, you storm out of your cubicle, jump in your car and, on your way to Pierre, you stop at the hardware store to pick up tar and feathers. Only the stupid hardware store doesn’t stock tar during the winter months.

Well, without tar to go with the feathers, the 223-mile trip to Pierre is as worthless as a nonbinding resolution. Instead, you go home, descend to your basement, and begin letting those layabout lawmakers have it on the Internet. You log into your favorite political blog, and you let the poison flow. “How dare those bleeping fools waste time on nothingness,” you write. And then you write a lot more “bleepings,” confident that a quick Sunday confession will take care of any spiritual blemishes that result from your Internet rage session.

Well, I hope you’re satisfied. I hope the scolding you just meted out to the 105 mostly sentient lawmakers of this state was worth your time.

Because really, I think you should cut them some slack. Admit it: You waste time at work. You check Facebook. Or you read updates about your favorite sports teams or your favorite celebrity who is headed back to rehab.

One of the biggest complaints you hear about the Legislature is that lawmakers waste a bunch of time. “Why don’t they get something done?” you hear constantly.

They are getting stuff done. Last week the House voted not to expand Medicaid to adults who qualify under the new guidelines established by the not-so-affordable Affordable Care Act — or Obamacare. See, that’s getting something done.

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They’re debating whether cities should have the ability to enact texting-while-driving bans. Some high-ranking lawmakers want to strip cities of their ability to do so. Instead, they would institute a statewide ban, albeit one weaker than what a half-dozen cities have on their books.

You know what you call that? Doing something.

Lawmakers are screaming and yelling about the new Common Core standards. Bills about Common Core are flying around all over the place. Talk to supporters of Common Core, and they’ll tell you that the new standards will make your child a genius. The opponents fear that Common Core is a sinister attempt to turn your kid into a communist.

Don’t you think the children are worth this debate? Do you really want them to turn out to be genius communists? Of course not. A genius communist is the worst kind of communist.

So how dare you accuse them of doing nothing. They just finished debating whether businesses should be allowed not to serve certain customers based on their sexual orientation. And they’re almost continuously debating whether people should be allowed to carry pistols into places such as maternity wards and hospice centers.

In fact, maybe lawmakers are doing too much. You know as well as I do that when politicians try to do too much, they inevitably make a mess of something. Really, the best politicians are the ones with the disposition of a lazy house cat.

But the outrage over all these meaningless resolutions has led to talk that, in the future, lawmakers will be limited in how many they can introduce. Some lawmakers have complained that they don’t like sitting around debating stuff about foreign affairs or federal legislation that is out of the purview of state government. They want an end to the stream of meaningless resolutions.

If I’m a member of the Pierre Chamber of Commerce, that kind of talk worries me. It means that lawmakers will be spending less time in the Capitol and more time roaming the streets of Pierre. That can only mean an increase in soda machine thefts and petty vandalism.

So let’s keep the meaningless resolutions. They add color to the Legislature. For every resolution you get demanding an inquiry into the UFO coverup, you get one that honors a state championship sports team or one that honors some baker for a third-place finish in the apple pie contest. If you don’t think government has a role in honoring sports teams or apple pie, then you’re clearly an anarchist.

Besides, the resolutions tell us a lot about the lawmakers who sponsor them — their phobias and their desires for how things should be run in the United States, even if they can’t effect real change.

So, whereas meaningless resolutions are often entertaining, keep lawmakers out of trouble and tell us a lot about their political beliefs ... be it resolved that we keep them around.